New York City

Man! Life is Busy! I’m just getting a chance to sit down and write about our day in New York City on Saturday. We had a great time. Nate and Shawna met at our house at around 8:15 am so we could get to the Trenton train station for the 9:08 train to New York. By the time we got to our destination the train was packed with people.

The first thing we did was just walk around with no real direction. We were kind of heading for Little Italy but went the wrong direction and ended up at Rockefeller Park. Jon and I had never been to that park before; it was a nice little park on the water.

After walking around Rockefeller Park we headed in the right direction toward Little Italy. On the way we walked down Canal Street where there’re all kinds of shops and people trying to sell you stuff. I got a Cashmere feel pink scarf, which I love!

We ate lunch at this little Italian restaurant that had the most amazing Fettuccine Alfredo I’ve ever eaten! While we were at the restaurant an older man that was sitting outside of the glass front window, had a heart attack or stroke or something and fell off his chair, hit the window, and was laying on the ground. By the time the ambulance got there the man didn’t have much of a pulse. They shocked him a few times but nothing happened. Then they got him into the ambulance and were supposedly still working on him when we left (which I guess what a good sign). Needless to say that was quite an event to happen. I was shook up for a while after that.

We took a walk in Grand Central Park after Lunch. I always love going there! There must have been a Santa parade that day, because there were hundreds of people all dressed up like Santa, walking through the park (they seemed unending)! It was pretty funny to watch and see all the interesting Santa outfits people had.

Not far from Grand Central park is the new Apple store that Jon really wanted to see. So we walked over there next. It’s pretty cool. The building is all glass with just a glass elevator in the middle of it and an Apple icon. You go down the elevator or the glass stairs and the store itself is underground.

There’s also a Nintendo World store near by that Jon really enjoyed going to :).

From the Nintendo World store we walked to Rockefeller Center. All of NYC was pretty crowded but when we got to Rockefeller center the people traffic got way worse. The sidewalks were so crowded that you inched your way forward, wedged in-between thousands of other people. It was nuts! We got to see the big Christmas tree all lit up (it’s so pretty!), but we didn’t even try to get close enough to watch people skating in the ice rink. It was way too crowded.

Time Square was our last stop before dinner. We didn’t actually spend too much time walking around in Time Square. We were trying to figure out where we were eating for dinner, and of course, everywhere was full with an hour or so wait for the next table! We ended up eating at TGI Friday’s right in Time Square. We were all so glad just to sit and give our legs a rest from walking all day :).

After dinner we were headed back to Penn Station to catch our train home but we stopped at the “Charmin” Restrooms first. What a crazy place! Yes, I’m talking about Charmin as in “Charmin” toilet paper. As a Christmas gift to NYC, Charmin installed at least 10 or more private bathrooms in a building right in Time Square. You go in and there’s a huge line of people in line. “Charmin” music is playing and there’s “Charmin” people running around dancing, singing, talking through megaphones, and all kinds of crazy stuff. After each person uses their own private bathroom with a little sink, a Charmin employee goes in and quickly sanitizes the seat and sprays febreeze. Then the next person can go it. It’s this big, huge ordeal just to go to the bathroom but it was nice and clean and quite an experience!

Once our 30 minute bathroom break was over we took the subway to Penn Station and waited to find out what track our train would be on (they don’t post the track #’s until 10 minutes before the train is supposed to leave). Once the track # finally was posted there was a mad rush of people that were running to get on the train. Once again, we were surrounded by hundreds of people squeezing their way through the doors and down the stairs to the terminal. We had to run all the way to the front of the train to find a car that even had seats! The others barely even had standing room. But we made it on the train and home by like 11:30, not too bad.

It was a really fun day!

I took pretty many pictures throughout the day but I haven't gotten a chance to go through them yet. I'll try to get to that tonight and post some, but there's no guarantee. :)